


the spaces that divide us

by natromanoffs



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 03, can be read as romantic or platonic, not really story just introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26372434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natromanoffs/pseuds/natromanoffs
Summary: He sits beside her, nursing his tea, and she lets her mind wander.
Relationships: Alec Hardy & Ellie Miller, Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50





	the spaces that divide us

**Author's Note:**

> takes place sometime mid s3

  
  


They’re sitting at a coffee shop. The weather outside is dull and grey, a sign of rain to come. Cars whiz past on the road outside, and Ellie sips her tea while watching the passing headlights. Alec Hardy is sitting beside her, sipping a black tea. Ellie got a cinnamon latte, and a raspberry scone. She picks at the scone, tearing off little pieces to eat one by one. She hasn’t got much of an appetite, but she also can’t remember the last time she ate, so she knows she needs to eat this scone whether she wants to or not. 

Hardy, on the other hand, is just taking sips of his much too strong tea, no food in sight. She knows he hasn’t been eating well lately, and she knows he’s barely been sleeping. And, as strange as it feels, she can’t help but worry about him. How can she not, really, when he almost died not so many years ago? Back then, he never really sat and dealt with his health issues, choosing instead to put them to the side to deal with at some undetermined future moment. He’d almost died back then. And she knows he’s had the pacemaker put in, knows he’s doing better, for the most part, but he doesn’t take care of himself. Sure, she overworks herself too, and doesn’t sleep well, and sometimes goes a full day without eating. But those times always break. She always finds her appetite eventually, always passes out in her bed from exhaustion at some point. Eventually, she’ll take a break from the work and let herself relax for a minute, something Hardy can’t seem to do.

  
  


The thing is, he left. For two years, she had absolutely no contact with him. She told herself he was fine. He’d gotten the pacemaker, and he was going to be with his family, so surely they’d take care of him. She could never be sure, though. There was this little part of her, that only surfaced after Tom and Fred were fast asleep, a recurring little thought that said maybe Hardy was dead. It was terrible to think about, and every time she had the thought she suppressed it as quickly as she could. But there was no way to tell for sure, was there? As much as she reassured herself that he was fine, there was always a little part of her that worried that he’d died. 

The more rational part told her, again and again, that he was fine and with his family and doing well, or, at the very least, doing better. Still, even with that, the two years with no contact were jarring in ways she hadn’t expected. It wasn’t like she’d expected him to call every day and check in, but she kind of thought he might call once in a while. Or, send a text, at least, just to make sure she was okay. So she could in turn make sure _he_ was okay. All she got was radio silence. She wondered, then, if he’d ever speak to her again. If she’d ever run into him someday. Maybe he’d come to Broadchurch to meet with someone, or maybe he’d pass through on his way to somewhere else. 

For the first few months after he leaves, she thinks she sees him everywhere. She’ll catch a glimpse of someone in the grocery store and think, for a split second, that it’s him, that he’s back, for whatever reason, and she’ll get this feeling in her stomach, this mixture of relief and anger and confusion and comfort. Then, just as soon as it appeared, the feeling will leave, when the man turns and she sees that it’s not Hardy, not at all, just one of the many brown haired guys who live nearby. She’ll try to focus on the grocery list and pretend that didn’t just happen, but those nights she’ll lie awake and wonder if he’s dead. 

  
  


He tells her that he’s just not good at those sort of things, those normal human connection things, and she gets it, she understands that he’s much more stiff and stoic than she could ever be. 

  


There are so many moments she can think of where their stark personality differences came out in full force. She remembers that one night, when the hotel had made a mistake and there was only one bed for the both of them. 

She’d said they’d share, because of course they would. She wasn’t some awkward teenager who couldn’t sleep next to someone without making a big deal about it. She was a grown woman, who could easily decide a good night’s rest was worth a little discomfort. Hardy got in beside her, but turned away almost immediately. She’s not sure she expected any different from him.

That morning, she wakes up, and she realizes something. He doesn’t touch her all night. At first that sounds fine, because _of course_ it’s not like he’s going to cuddle with her in his sleep, even an unconscious Alec Hardy would never do such a thing, at least not when it comes to her. The thing is, though, that he doesn’t touch her at all in his sleep. There’s no accidental brush of his leg against hers, and he never turns to face her in his sleep. When she wakes up, drool caked on the side of her mouth and legs half-splayed across the bed, she turns to find him in the exact same position he was in the night before: back to her, as close to the edge of the bed as humanly possible. And look, of course he’d be uncomfortable sharing a bed with her, of course he’d want to stick to his side, but she can’t believe just how far away he is. There are mere inches between them but it feels like a goddamn chasm. 

She’s just not like that. She’s all emotions, and empathy, and crying at whatever case they’re working on because she can’t just turn those feelings off. If there’s a woman in front of her, crying about something terrible that’s happened to her, of course Ellie’s going to tear up. It’s in her nature, it’s like a reflex, it’s not something she can control.

That doesn’t mean she can’t be a little stoic or standoffish if the moment calls for it. With Hardy, she’s certainly not as open and emotional as she is with Beth, for example. 

  
  


Her and Hardy, they just don’t operate like that. She supposes it’s him who sets that tone, though she’s got a distaste for him as soon as they meet. On rare occasions, Hardy will break this tone. He doesn’t do it often, only when things are really bad. Though, with all that’s happened with Joe, sometimes things are really bad more often than not. At times like these, when Ellie’s world is shattering and she can barely keep it together, Hardy will try to call her Ellie or put a hand on her shoulder. But she groans when he calls her Ellie and shrugs his hand from his shoulder. It feels so strange and forced. It’s just not how they operate.

So, of course, when he leaves Broadchurch, after the Sandbrook murders are finally wrapped up, they don’t hug goodbye. Of course, they end it on a handshake instead. Of course, Ellie’s eyes burn with unshed tears all the same, because as delicate and detached as their relationship is, she knows she’ll miss him.

  
  


Because for a moment there, in the middle of all of it, she feels alone, truly alone. Beth’s mad at her, and Tom’s mad at her, so there’s no one on her side. Except for him. For all his annoying personality traits and stuffy stoic exterior, he’s on her side. When she feels Beth’s angry glare heating up the back of her head, she doesn’t have to look too far to find him waiting with another distraction. When Tom refuses to see her again, Hardy’s around the corner with encouraging words. Platitudes, maybe, but they’re better than nothing.

Because _he’s_ the one who breaks the news that Joe was the one who killed Danny. He’s the one that watches her crumble and sob and scream and retch. He’s the one who’s there in the room when she lays waste to Joe, tears him apart as best she can before she’s yanked away from him. And _he’s_ the one she goes to later, he’s the one who spends hours talking through it all with her when nothing makes sense. Because when her world falls apart, he’s the anchor, or the ledge, he’s something to grab a hold of. 

  
  


Beth has a baby and then yells at Ellie to get out of her house. “That woman,” she calls her, as if they haven’t been friends for years now. And Ellie tries her best to grab a hold of Tom, but he keeps slipping through her fingers, and he refuses to see her, then he’s siding with Joe instead of her, and what is she supposed to do when even her own son doesn’t want to be with her? Everyone blames her for not knowing, for not seeing the signs. She can’t blame them, because she blames herself, too, she feels that guilt running through her and tearing her up from the inside out.

And she needs Hardy then. She needs him to tell her that it’s not her fault, even if she doesn’t believe him. She needs him to need her to help with Sandbrook, needs that distraction so she can put the disaster away, at least partially, at least for a moment or two. She needs him to talk about it with her, because for a while, he’s the only one who really does talk to her about it. She talks to her sister, here and there, but her sister is busy taking care of Tom. Ellie can’t really talk about how deeply hurt and betrayed she feels by Tom when, on the other side of the phone, he’s sitting just a room over. And sure, Ellie will have little conversations about it all with others in the town, because it’s Broadchurch and everyone is in everyone else’s business. But on times like those, she’ll clench her jaw and give a well-practiced answer to any question they ask her. She can’t get into it, not with these people, not with Maggie or Paul, as well meaning as they may be. Because she knows, to some degree they’ll be wondering how she could have missed this. 

  


And, honestly, maybe Hardy wonders that, too. Maybe, though he tells her otherwise, he does see her at partial fault for all that’s happened. Frankly, though, she doesn’t have the energy to doubt him like that, not when he’s all she’s got. So they go over it all in his hotel room, and her head aches so hard she thinks it might crack and here she is falling apart on the rug by his bed. But they talk through it all. And when she walks into the courtroom when the trial begins, all eyes are on her. She looks to Beth, but there’s nothing welcoming written anywhere on Beth’s face. For a moment, her eyes dart around the room. She feels everyone’s stares, and they make her heart pound just a little, and she’s looking all around the room but she doesn’t know where to go.

Then, “Miller,” and she sits beside him. She sits beside him as her husband is on trial for killing a boy. Her world is ending and she sits beside him.

  


So, they leave with a handshake rather than a hug. But it’s a conscious decision. A quick mention, an “of course we won’t hug right now.” She thinks that maybe her conscious decision not to hug him reveals how much she almost does. But, it’s them. So of course they leave each other with a shrug and a flippant comment. But, god, it’s so much more than that. She leaves, she walks out of his little place, and she walks home. She doesn’t cry, but her eyes stay watery the whole way home, and she thinks she blinks a little too much for the next few days. 

  
  


For the most part, they’re glib and unemotional and they operate just fine like that. She’s more emotional than him, she’ll tear up while he stands stiff, and when someone’s in pain she’ll be the one to offer a hug and comforting words while he’ll just look away. But there’s one moment they share where he opens himself up to her, one moment that shows her that, as unskilled at human connection as he may be, he’s connected himself to her. 

She’s driving and he’s sitting beside her. Trees whip past as they sit in silence, but then he starts talking. He tells her about finding Pippa, about a body submerged in water. He tells her that Pippa was the same age as his daughter was then. He tells her about finding Pippa’s body, about a dead girl in a lake. He describes the body, how it had begun to decompose, how he picked it up, how he picked _her_ up and carried her out of there. 

She knows, as he tells her, that this -- finding Pippa’s body -- is a big, life defining moment for him. She knows, as he’s telling her all of this, that this moment haunts him. She can hear the emotion in his voice, a rare occurrence when it comes to him. And she can feel the tears in his eyes, because they’re echoed in hers. She tries not to cry, and he tries not to look at her, and they just drive in silence, holding back tears and swallowing at the lumps in their throats. 

  
  


After all of it, after all they’ve gone through, here he is. Two years of not-knowing, but now he sits beside her sipping at his tea. Now, here they are, trying to figure out Trish’s case. It’s awful, what Trish has gone through, what she is currently going through, and Ellie can’t help if she cries about it sometimes, if she tears up at inopportune and unprofessional moments. Because she may not understand Trish’s pain, not really, not to its full extent. But she still feels it, in some peripheral way, in some different shape. They’re trying to go through this case, and identify potential suspects, and so far the main thing Ellie’s taking away is that no man can really be trusted. With every man they talk to, they add a new suspect rather than remove one. This man cheated and this man abused and this man won’t tell them the truth. 

When she really thinks about it, she’s not sure she can trust any man anymore, not really. There was Joe, the perfect man, the love of her life, someone she trusted with her whole being. And he killed a boy the same age as their son. And she knows Mark hit Danny on one occasion, and she knows Mark was terrible to Beth on many more. And Tom’s been punished at school for watching porn on his phone and it’s not the same as Joe, of course it’s not. Yet. Because it could be. Who knows what Tom could develop into?

She thinks, maybe she trusts Hardy. But even then, she’s not so sure. Because Claire once said, as some evasive tactic, that Hardy had abused her. And for a split second, Ellie had believed it. Now, of course, she knows that isn’t the truth. But she can never know for sure that Hardy’s never done anything like that. And she can never know for sure that he’ll never do anything like that. 

Joe has shown her that fully trusting a person can go so terribly wrong. To some degree, she trusts Hardy. To some degree, she thinks he’s different from all these other men. But she’s never quite sure.

  
  


They’ve been sitting in this coffeeshop for a few hours now, and she can’t remember the last time he looked over at her. She’s sure he’s lost in thought about the case. Part of her wishes she was able to do that, too, to run over a case in her head, over and over until it’s all figured out. But there’s another part of her that’s eternally grateful that she doesn’t work like that. At some point, her mind wanders. She thinks about her life, and what she’s going to eat for breakfast the next morning, and what chores she has to do. Her mind can’t just relentlessly focus on a case like this for days on end, not without breaks in between all of the rumination.

It’s dark outside, now. She’s finished her scone.

“Miller,” he says, the first words either of them have spoken in hours.

She turns to him, meets his tired eyes with hers.

“You should go home,” he says. “Get some rest.”

She nods. A good sleep is just what she needs to refresh her mind to focus full-force on the case again tomorrow. She gets up, throws her napkins in the trash. 

“You should go get some sleep, too,” she says. 

He just nods. “Night, Miller.”

“Night,” she says, with a small, tired smile that’s become all too familiar.

  


She looks at him once more before leaving. He’s staring off somewhere past her, eyes glazed over, lost in thought. She wishes she believed that he’d get up a few minutes later and go home and get a good nights’ rest. But she knows he’ll be sitting in this spot till the coffee shop closes. She knows he’ll go home and lie in bed only to stare at the ceiling and run over all the details of the case some more. 

He looks so goddamn tired. 

She shuts the door behind her softly, leaving him to sip his tea and stare out into the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> so. i stayed up to write this one and i'm fairly sure it's incoherent. and it jumps all over the place but i hope it was still comprehensible to some degree. anyway i just have a lot of feelings about these two and needed to share, so.


End file.
